Review #799: 'Lone Survivor' (2013)

Like 2004's excellent, melancholy Friday Night Lights (and the TV series that followed), Peter Berg injects Lone Survivor with the same sense of camaraderie, as a band of brothers go to near-impossible lengths to carry out the task at hand. But where Lights took place on the football pitch, Lone Survivor is set amongst the unforgivable terrain of the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. Based on sniper Martin Luttrell's book (here he is played by Mark Wahlberg), the events that took place in June 2005 was one of the most gruelling acts of warfare ever recorded.

After receiving orders to execute Ahmad Shah, a Taliban leader responsible for deaths of over a dozen marines, a Navy SEAL's unit headed by Erik Kristensen (Eric Bana) plan for a quick operation. Luttrell, team leader Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), sniper 'Ax' Axelson (Ben Foster) and communications specialist Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) are picked for the job, and are dropped onto a steep and jagged Afghan hillside. They locate their target, but after experiencing some communication problems, come across a Taliban sheep-herder and two children. After deciding to obey the rules of engagement and let them go, they are soon pursued by a small army, who rain bullets and rockets down upon them.

Starting with the same twangly-guitar music that steeped Friday Night Lights so beautifully and richly in atmosphere, the film begins with heavy in shots of sunsets, our heroes staring at photographs of their loved ones. and cracking wise over dinner. It doesn't do much to help us distinguish one from the other (apart from the fact they are all recognisable faces), but it does establish a sense of foreboding doom. The opening scene depicts a bullet-ridden and near-dead Luttrell before skipping back in time, so the outcome of a film called 'Lone Survivor' leaves little ambiguity. And when the bullets start to fly, Peter Berg shows us one of the most brutal and realistic depictions of war even put on film.

The four are shot, blown up, and in the most wince-inducing scenes, thrown down a hillside of sharp rocks and thick trees, where we get to experience every impact and every bone broken. It's an endless array of loud violence, and when you finally think it's over as Luttrell is aided by Afghan villagers, they still more to come. It's in the later scenes when the film becomes less a serious study of warfare and bravery, and becomes more of a Hollywood movie. There's a lot added in these scenes that didn't happen in real life, and it feels like an unnecessary attempt to appease an audience used to more traditional action-movie climaxes. But for the most part, this is thrilling, and quite moving, stuff.


Directed by: Peter Berg
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, Emile Hirsch, Eric Bana
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie